Stocking filled up
There are gadgets galore to gift to the wine lover in your life this Christmas if you want to avoid red faces about wrapping up the the wrong vintage.
WHAT should you buy for the wine lover in your life? With the festive season rapidly approaching, this is a problem for many people. If you try to buy them a bottle of wine, you will have to get it exactly right. There is always the danger that you get the region, vintage or producer wrong, but everyone loves a new gadget, so here are a few suggestions that I have tried and tested.
CORAVIN
There is always a special bottle lurking in every wine lover’s collection. The big decision is when it should be opened and enjoyed. Are next week’s dinner guests worthy of this special wine, and is it ready? Sometimes a bottle languishes in the rack because the wine lover just wants to enjoy it glass by glass on their own.
Opening that bottle sets the clock ticking. If you don’t pour and enjoy the whole bottle, by tomorrow it may have lost some of its top notes, and then its quality is on a downwards track. This is where Coravin has the answer. It looks very much like a smart corkscrew, but instead of a screw, there is a long needle. Instead of taking the cork out of the bottle, the needle goes into the cork, and you can squirt argon into the bottle, which then allows some wine out.
I tried one and needed three small squirts of gas to release enough wine to count as a drinking sample. Then you pull the needle out and the cork reseals, and the wine stays fresh under argon for – almost – as long as you like. I have tasted wines stored this way, half full, after several months. So that prized bottle can be sampled and enjoyed, glass by glass over months, not days.
There are several models of Coravin. I tried the Coravin Timeless Six + Mist which has a small device to aerate the wine as it is poured, which counteracts the effect of being closed up in a bottle under argon gas for weeks. It also also gives you screwcaps to replace the cap on screw capped bottles. From there, it is the same procedure, with resealable silicon inserts to keep the wine fresh for up to three months. Coravins vary in cost, depending on the model you choose, but £220 should get you the version I tried from www.coravin.co.uk.
GLASSWARE
Is there a perfect glass for all wines? If your cupboards are as full as mine of varying sized and shaped glasses, you probably reach for one that seems to offer an all-round good drinking experience, and most importantly, you have enough of those glasses to set the table. Master of Wine Jancis Robinson has teamed up with glassmaker Richard Brendon to create the perfect glass for all wines. She says she has never understood why white wines are generally served in a smaller glass than reds.
Made in Slovakia, these glasses are mouth blown into a perfect tulip shape and they are lead-free, which makes them extremely light. They are also the finest glass I have used. Gossamer thin at the rim, they are a delight to drink from, enhancing aromas and delivering the wine to precisely the right spot on the taste buds.
They are also dishwasher proof which is a blessing since my heavy-handed husband managed to crush one of my glasses while drying up. Available from Hic! in Ledston, the JR +RB glasses cost £70 for two.
CORKCICLE
If you hate messy ice-buckets but want to keep your wine cool, a Corkcicle Air could be the answer. Chill your bottle down, while storing this long, icicle-like gadget in the freezer. Once you have opened the bottle, and poured a taster, put the Corkcicle in the bottle and its frozen centre will keep the wine in your bottle cool. You don’t even have to remove the device from the bottle before pouring the next glass. A clever top allows you to pour from the bottle without removing the Corkcicle. Available direct from Corkcicle.com at £29, or from that famous online retailer at £22.
PUZZLES
When the family comes round, there is nothing better than having a jig-saw puzzle on the go. It can provide hours of entertainment for those who don’t want to go on the post-lunch ramble.
Master of wine Rebecca Gibb has devised several jigsaw puzzles featuring wine and spirit regions. These make excellent presents for wine lovers, and since they have 1,000 pieces, they will provide days of amusement, although it might be kind to buy a bottle of wine for the recipient to sip while they puzzle. The options are Wines of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal and Whiskies of Scotland. Available from www.gingerfox.co.uk at £17.99.
BOOKS
Oz Clarke is the one wine writer whose easy, informative style is enjoyed by every wine lover. There isn’t a corner of the wine world that he hasn’t visited, asked questions about or tasted comprehensively.
So his new book, Oz Clarke’s Story of Wine, published by Pavilion (£30), traces wine from 8,000 years ago to the present day. From the “poison” jar at the court of King Jamshid in Persian mythology, which was probably just his favourite grapes that had fermented over winter, the 36 jars of wine found in the tomb of Tutankhamun, the wine bars in Pompeii, bubbles in Champagne, and into the modern era with improvements in glass for bottles, Bordeaux classification, and on to the great wines of the last 100 years.
But there is so much more to this book than a history lesson. There are reports that the famous Vega Sicilia estate made King Carlos of Spain wait, just like everyone else, to get a case of its famous wine. Then there was the bottle of Ch. Lafite that sold for over £100,000, was flown to the States and displayed at an exhibition, where under the glare of a spotlight, the cork shrank and fell in.
This is a romp through the wine highlights of the last 8,000 years. Enjoyable, absorbing and likely to keep your wine lover quiet for the whole of the festive season.